Fogo de Chão Brazilian Steakhouse — Restaurant in Huntington Beach

Update 10/07/2024

3 weeks after my initial review, the "front-house manager" from this location reached out to me. 3 WEEKS! It took you 3 weeks, to respond to a customer who had a bad experience at your location, and on their birthday nonetheless. That is adding insult to injury after I clearly expressed how awful of a time my party had at this location. And the gentleman chose to call me at 6pm! Why am I noting the time, you ask? Because that is the start of your dinner rush! Your restaurant is filling up with customers, I can clearly hear it in the background, and that's when you choose to call me!? I worked in restaurants for several years, and you don't make "business calls" like that, at those times. You couldn't give me a call before you opened? You couldn't do it in between your lunch and dinner hours, when it's the slowest? Instead of focusing on your in-house customers, which you've once again showed you care little about, you end up doing this. I was very cordial with the front-of-house manager and expressed my disappointment, again, and told him the same exact things that occurred that I wrote in both my review and to their primary feedback email address. That was another red flag. You called to ask me what happened after it was put in written form. Another indication of broken communication and lack of oversight. Finally, after being told he would look into what went wrong, given the information provided, he would call me back in 1-2 business days.

I've NEVER heard back from them. ORIGINAL REVIEW (MODIFIED)

Circling back to the service - The menu showcases that the Churrasco experience should be serving around 15 different types of meats and cuts. Throughout the entire evening, we only were served maybe 6, TOTAL! That's 60% of their selections that were never even brought to our table! And if I am paying $70 for this, that is totally unacceptable. Not once did we have any Pork, Chicken OR Sausage selections brought around once. The Lamb was hands down the best meat that we were served the entire time. And you could easily taste how different meats were salted more than others. I personally never order my meats on the rare side. The majority of the meats that were brought, were brought around rare.

We sat around for LENGTHY periods of times - sometimes 25-30 minutes before someone came around with a rack of meat to our table. None of the servers ever came over to check on us. Only twice, in a 1.5 hour span, did someone come around to check on our drinks or if we needed refills. When one finally did, we said we anted more meats, and nothing changed. We had 7 members in my party and of the 6 of us that chose Churrasco, none of us ever turned our buttons over to red. When meats were brought to our table, the one person who did not order the Churrasco and did not have a button next to them, always got asked if she wanted meat. That right there is just poor oversight.

We watched as other tables were constantly being served. I watched as 4 different runners followed each other, one behind the other, into one portion of the restaurant. There was a point in the evening were we mentioned to THREE separate servers in a 20 minute span that we wanted more meats and still sat around waiting. Other party members noticed servers standing around together and chatting, several times; I noticed this at least once. It wasn't until when things started to severely slow down where meats, the ones we specifically asked for with the servers, were finally being brought over and served to us like you would expect. A party member, again, told a server about my birthday and he brought the dessert menu to our table. No one ever came back to check and see what i would have wanted until we, again, had to flag down a server, and it was hardly even busy anymore. Even after I ordered the dessert, we waited around for a good 10-15 min for it to be brought out.

Spent just over 2 hours total here and spent around 1.5 hours just...

It took me a while to figure out how to write this review. I guess I shall just go in order for my experience. Reservations were quite easy to make. No problems with at all. I had a special request/surprise for a special evening and was treated amazingly well. They handled it the best way ever possible. The politeness of every staff member we encountered was TOP NOTCH. It felt very personal and comforting. They were amazing. Now... We were seated, and the cheese puffs were at the table. We were quickly approached by our server, who didn't lay on the large up-sale for higher ticket items, which I appreciated. He took our drink orders and served them quickly. We were served water prior. Literally room temperature water in a glass. Not off to a good start. Salad/appetizer bar... I have NEVER been to an FdC that had this display. I have never been anywhere that had this type of display and not in a good way. The romaine hearts were browning, and every visible piece was browning along the cut edges. The other greens, from the spinach to the radicchio to the mesc mix... all wilted and bowls half full. It was about 6:20pm, and two staff members were chit chatting as they non-chalantly placed the name stands in front of some items. The sliced bread was about an inch high. Think of cutting a fresh baguette with a butter knife... squashed to the point both the top and bottom crusts touched. Suffice it to say, my plate was quite bare. My wife is the only reason I didn't walk up and take pbotos. Then, back to the table. We had yet to be served the mash, bananas, and crispy polenta. We finally received it about 5 or 7 minutes after we sat back down. Mash was cold, crispy polenta was almost inedible since it was probably crispy the day before and not so much after sitting out or being refried. I gave up after the first bite before I cracked a tooth. And to the main course... medallions turned over, and we were ready to enjoy what we had been waiting for since we found out they were going to open. We had our first bite of meat not too long after the flip. Then we waited.... and waited... and waited. The juices on the plate, a 2nd plate, I personally went back to the salad bar to get for us to have our meats, literally chilled to the plate. I started my timer after about 5 minutes, and it stopped at 13 before the 2nd meat offering came. Then another 10 is between the next two beef options. So basically, for almost 50 minutes, we had 3 beef options, a couple of "last piece" bacon wrapped somethings or chicken. We were approached, and I was fairly honest about what was going on. I struggled to find even a $50 value for our entire eating experience, much less $71. Apologies were made, and a promise to have more meats sent our way. We had a couple more, and then the pork belly came out. My wife requested just one piece... he completely ignored her and gave her 3, doused them with honey, placed the limes, then opted to give her one more "just in case." I saw our server twice more in the 2 hours we were there. We honestly were full from just waiting and disappointment. Over our $200 (what felt like) appetizers and 40 minutes after we got home, we ended up eating at home anyway.

Sadly, we will not be going back to this location, however, I would like to offer some tips that might help our experience. Try to get a reservation around 7 ish. There seemed to be more gaucho action around that time and people seemed to be getting well fed. Try your hardest not sit by the exterior boundaries, against the walls in booths or by the front glass. Try to sit closer to the grills. We had two total services (gauchos) that were somewhat a fresh grill meaning hot and pretty much untouched, not the sliver by the rods that we were approached with otherwise. All the others were end of the line, or rare slivers of meat.

The service was grand. I just wish the actual dining...

Most people have never been to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I have not only traveled there during the spectacular Carnival de Rio but all over Brazil, in Sao Paulo, you name it, I went there and every time I went to every town amazing churrascaria. I have also been to every Fogo de Chao in USA!! Plus the one on every NCL cruise ship so you can say I’m an expert in Brazilian steak house.

I’m very disappointed the manager here had asked for my email and phone number to follow up on the bad treatment I had during their opening month. I was charged the premium price $23 more than the regular plan wo the rib eye, he never called or follow up. I recently gave a review 5 stars to the one in Scottsdale but mentioned my bad experience here in Huntington Beach, the manager there again asked for my number to make it up to me BUT HE NEVER DID, I was not that upset I was overcharged $46 for both of us but fair is fair, it’s a matter of principle, frankly I’m shocked a big company like Fogo would ignore an unacceptable n justified complaint, it’s very shortsighted, a small coupon would have been a token of good will, most restaurants would compensate a meal for lesser complain. Kei concepts despite having 1 hour wait to get in their restaurants all over Little Saigon, replied to every review and apologized to every one that had 1% unhappiness, that’s the way to do business. I will post my review on Google.

I decided to give it another try and it actually got worse. I was seated right away as nobody broke the door at 6:30pm, the server seated us and went MIA immediately, nobody came by, what happened to him? I can’t describe him as yelp might not allow it, I had to chase after the gaucho guys just to get a bill! Incredible!

The salad bar is very small comparing to all the other Fogos, it was almost a joke, the last time I was here there were more fruits, this time all the fruits were only for display, all they had was oranges, I have 4 Sunkist orange trees in my garden so I was not interested, other Fogos had watermelon,mangoes, fresh pineapple, etc..nobody came by to ask me if I wanted some dessert I had no idea what they had, the menu was gone. Now come the meats. The signature meat PICANHA was so salty, I squeeze lemon on it but it did not help and it was dripping no real flavor, they did not have grilled pineapple here all the other meats were by contrast dry and had no flavor, don’t they marinate the meats here? the lobster was succulent but TOO SALTY, don't get the crab cakes my husband had that, it was not a cake, it was just crab in a small pan. I love the caipirinha all over Brazil and in every FOGO just not here, it had such an after taste, I asked for more pineapple juice to mask that after taste but it did not work, it was so strong like I was drinking motor oil, to say I was disappointed would be an understatement. I told a friend to try this out, she’s kind of wishy washy not a fussy eater like myself, she called and complained why I recommended it, she could not eat it either, there is no way this can be 4 stars or 5 stars, I hate to drive but if I get desperate for a Brazilian steak I guess I have to drive to the Irvine FOGO or the churrascaria in Long Beach. I have 2 cruises coming up out of Miami and fort Lauderdale and my 1st meal there, you guess it would be in a FOGO!

Btw $59 was false advertising, we were charged $64, they said exception California but the ad on Yelp never mentioned it, in NYC, it was in bold letters the menu is $5 or more I don’t remember in NYC. They can and should do better, NOT...